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Digital Reeds - Cheryl Melfi, clarinet
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SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2012
Doors open at 7:30pm, Concert begins at 8:00pm
Tickets $10/Students $5
City Center Square
1100 Main Street, 5th Floor
Kansas City, MO
The Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance (KcEMA) celebrates the beginning of 2012 by welcoming Cheryl Melfi
back to Kansas City for a concert of electro-acoustic music for
clarinet. She brings with her a program of new music including
two world premieres.
Cheryl Melfi is a highly experienced and respected performer of
electro-acoustic music. She has numerous festival performances to
her credit, including Electronic Music Midwest, Society for
Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEASMUS), Electro-Acoustic
Juke Joint, and the Thailand International Composition Festival.
She is a frequent collaborator with KcEMA, both as a soloist and as a
member of the Kansas City-based new music ensemble Quadrivium.
She has also brought electro-acoustic music to Kansas City audiences
via Dark Matter, a group of artists, astronomers, and educators
combining the sounds of electro-acoustic music with awe-inspiring
science education.
In addition to two world premieres—Daniel Eichenbaum’s The Lonely Road and Richard Johnson’s Hiram—Cheryl will perform works by an international group of composers. Alex Harker’s Fluence
explores the simultaneous existence of multiple musical worlds through
interactions between the clarinet and an electronic “tape” part
generated in real time. Butterfly is composed by multimedia artist Mark Snyder, whose work has been described as “expansive, expressive and extremely human.” The program is completed by João Pedro Oliveira’s Time Spell, a piece inspired by a the story of a man destined to repeat the same day until the end of time.
Cheryl Melfi
has served as principal clarinetist in the Thailand Philharmonic
Orchestra, the Catalina Chamber Orchestra, and the Michigan Pops
Orchestra. She is a past member of Quadrivium, the Crosswinds
Ensemble, the Arizona-based wind quintet Fünf, and the contemporary
music quartet THUD. She has also performed with contemporary
music groups including the Contemporary Directions Ensemble, the Prime
Directive, and the Nova Chamber Players, and has collaborated with
numerous composers on new works for the clarinet. She is a
frequent collaborator with the Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts
Alliance. With Quadrivium, she was a featured artist at the 2010
Electro-Acoustic Juke Joint and the 2011 Thailand International
Composition Festival. Dr. Melfi has appeared as a guest artist
and clinician at the University of Central Oklahoma and the Music/Arts
Institute, and her performance at the 2008 International Clarinet
Association’s ClarinetFest was called “excellent” and “exotic.”
Other festival performances include Electronic Music Midwest, SEAMUS,
the KMTA/MMTA Joint Conference, and the University of Central
Missouri’s new music festival.
From 2005–2007 Dr. Melfi was Instructor of Clarinet at Mahidol
University in Salaya, Thailand. While living in Southeast Asia
she served as faculty artist for the Southeast Asian Youth Orchestra
and Wind Ensemble (SAYOWE), and presented recitals, clinics and
workshops at the Asian Symphonic Band Competition (ASBC), the Singapore
Bandmasters’ Workshop, the Gitameit Music Center in Yangon, and other
events throughout the region. In 2007 she performed in Yangon
with U Maung Maung, the principal clarinetist of the Myanmar Radio and
Television Orchestra, in the first-ever collaboration between American
and Burmese clarinetists.
From 2008–2011 Dr. Melfi was Assistant Director and Instructor of
Clarinet at the Community Music and Dance Academy at UMKC Conservatory
of Music and Dance in Kansas City, Missouri. In that capacity she
expanded the Academy’s clarinet studio, founded a faculty recital
series, and collaborated with outstanding artists and educators on the
creation of new and innovative arts programs.
Dr. Melfi holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University
of Arizona, the Master of Music degree from the University of Michigan,
and the Bachelor of Music degree from Baldwin-Wallace College
Conservatory of Music. Her clarinet teachers include Jerry
Kirkbride, E. Fred Ormand, and David Bell.
The Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance
(KcEMA), founded in 2007, is now in its fifth season. KcEMA endeavors
to encourage and develop understanding and appreciation of electronic
music and to create an expansive sense of community for electronic
musicians and other artists in the Kansas CityArea. KcEMA organizes
concerts of electronic music and collaborative projects with generative
and performing artists. KcEMA provides a forum for electronic musicians
and artists in other media to collaborate, exchange ideas, and grow as
an interactive, supportive community.
Urban Culture
Project is an initiative of the Charlotte Street Foundation, an
organization dedicated to making Kansas City a place where artists and
art thrive. Urban Culture Project creates new opportunities for artists
of all disciplines and contributes to urban revitalization by
transforming spaces in downtown Kansas City into new venues for
multi-disciplinary contemporary arts programming.
For more information on the Charlotte Street Foundation, please visit www.charlottestreet.org
For more information on KcEMA, please visit www.kcema.net
For more information on Cheryl, please visit http://cherylmelfi.wordpress.com
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The Aaron Copland
Fund for Music
KcEMA is funded in part
through the generosity of the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, whose
purpose is to encourage and improve public knowledge and appreciation
of contemporary American music. |
Martha Lee Cain Tranby Music Enrichment Fund
KcEMA is supported in part by a grant
from the Martha Lee Cain Tranby Music Enrichment Fund, which provides
grants for the production or presentation of music performances,
including the promotion of music education, composition, performance,
and other musicians’ endeavors by individuals, groups or institutions.
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 Electrotap
KcEMA would like to thank Electrotap for their generous corporate support of electronic music and art in Kansas City.
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“When
you think of electronic music, boops and beeps might come to mind.
Synthesizer-heavy new wave. Tinny video game themes. But listen
to the work of the Kansas City Electronic Music Alliance, a co-op of
composers, musicians — sometimes even performance artists — that
promotes experimental electronic music in the area. You might be
surprised by the music’s emotionality, its sonic richness, its absolute
abstract nature.”
- Sarah Benson, ink
Magazine
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